I’m not one of those people who is good at writing when there is a lot of extraneous noise around. I’m also a procrastinator. That means when my life gets chaotic, it’s actually hard to sit down and write.

This has been the issue with the last half of Blonde on the Backwater, the fifth book in the Dairyland Murders Series. I wouldn’t say I’ve been blocked. I’d say I’ve been preoccupied. I’ve been fixating on things that are happening in my real life, when I should be concentrating on the alternate universe in my head.

That’s why the garden was so important to me last year. This year, not so much. I’ve been using my free time to hang out with my husband and run off on fun little excursions.

But that doesn’t mean my brain hasn’t been whispering to me the whole time.

This last Saturday, I was working at my second part time job, and it was unusually quiet there. So I took that as a sign that I should just take a few minutes and catch up on my outlining.

That catch-up turned into two pages of outline to fill out another quarter of the book.

And my brain came up with plot twists that simply hadn’t occurred to me until that very moment.

I recognize that I need to be more disciplined with my time. I need to create those pockets of quiet contemplation. Waiting for them to happen is not really an option.

And I know your counting on me. For your sake as well as mine, I’ll get there.